


Crooked Shadows

by xzombiexkittenx



Category: Batman Begins (2005), Sleepy Hollow
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Arkham Asylum, Gotham City - Freeform, M/M, Mental Instability, Mental Institutions, Previous Ichabod Crane/Katrina Van Tassel, Self-Harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-12-07
Updated: 2006-12-29
Packaged: 2018-03-10 08:53:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 15,170
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3284366
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xzombiexkittenx/pseuds/xzombiexkittenx
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gotham city's no place for a good man. Ichabod Crane meets Jonathan Crane and doesn't turn him in.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Upright Man

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If you stand upright, do not fear a crooked shadow - Chinese proverb

Ichabod is tired. His shoes are waterlogged and he can’t feel his feet from the cold. For all that the temperature has dropped so far he feels damp, more than anything else. Fatigue has drained him of all color, save for the pinkening of his nose and cheeks from where the wind flays his skin raw.

The city twists up above him, misshapen, because the architects of Gotham, hired after the great fire, seemed to have no conception of what skyscrapers should look like. The light catches on odd angles and the occasional gothic spire, until Ichabod is dizzy and he has to look away, back to the filthy puddles saturated with cigarette butts and old newspapers.

He wishes it would snow, just to cover all the dirt and grime. Just so he can pretend that the city is beautiful. Just for a moment. That would be enough to keep him going.

He hates his job some nights; nursing cheap, cold coffee with too much sugar to mask the taste, hands freezing because he left his warmer gloves in his apartment and he’s had to make due with ones for much warmer weather. Some nights it seems like no one in Gotham is good any more and everyone is as dirty and cold as the water seeping through his socks and creeping up his trousers. He wants to go home, play soothing music and sleep in front of the radiator. He does not want to see another old man frozen from the cold, or another hooker beaten and far too young. He wants to draw his shutters and drown himself in opera until he forgets the tiny blue hands of the baby shaken to death early on in his shift and the grim faces of the immigrant women standing over a man riddled with bullet holes.

Ichabod fumbles in his pockets until he finds a crumpled packet of cigarettes. He shakes one out and lights it with numb, clumsy fingers. It’s a habit he’s always hated, but on nights like this he feels like it’s all he can do to keep from screaming himself hoarse.

Last week he shot a man. One of the untreated victims of the gas attack on the Narrows had burst into a small grocery store while he was buying his cigarettes. Wayne enterprises has financed research for a long term cure. Most people have been given the first cure, or the one that came later, to treat those who had been under for longer. It’s Gotham though, it’s the Narrows, and there are those who still haven’t come out of the cracks yet. Ichabod keeps finding what’s left of them. He’d drawn his gun in the little shop but his warning shot hadn’t done anything more than enrage the man. He calls it a warning shot, but really his hands had been shaking too badly to aim straight the first time. Ichabod didn’t miss after that. Not with a mother and her children shopping for sweets, not with the drunk teenagers trying to buy liquor without ID, not with the innocent bystanders. He put five bullets in the man before he stayed down.

The newspaper rubbing up against Ichabod’s leg from the wind has a picture of Jonathan Crane on the front page.

Have you seen this man?

Ichabod has heard all the jokes and all the sly comments about his last name over the past few weeks. He has taken it all with a stoicism he no longer feels. He highly doubts the Batman is going to mistake him for the missing doctor. Sharing a last name with Jonathan Crane does not make them look at all the same. One Gotham police inspector, freezing to death from the cold and the misery, all black and whites except for the slash of red scarf, cannot be mistaken for the sharply handsome doctor. The newspaper’s photo is in black and white, but Ichabod has seen the headshots they took at Arkham. Jonathan is sallow rather than pale and his eyes are the kind of blue that the skies over Gotham never are.

Ichabod wonders if he’s still wandering the city, afraid and more than half mad. He doubts it. In Jonathan’s state he wouldn’t give the doctor more than a few days before someone killed him. Less, now that it’s gotten so cold out.

He tosses his coffee into the nearest overflowing trash can and starts walking back to headquarters. He’s not on patrol and if someone needs him, they can call him at his office.

Ichabod thinks he’s a little crazy himself. He’s got the Crane case evidence strewn all over his kitchen table and pinned up on his walls. A montage of sharply angled cheekbones and huge, haunted eyes. There’s a tale to be told behind the bright reflection of Jonathan’s glasses and cheap suits. Something terrible and cruel that turned such a brilliant young man into the Scarecrow. He spends too much time sitting in the kitchen, staring at the photos, watching the progression from boy, to student, to doctor. He’s woken in the night dreaming of the countryside, cloudless skies that match Jonathan’s eyes and crows circling overhead. Ichabod dreams of straight-jackets and surveillance tapes of a man too afraid to even feel the fear. There are pictures and witness reports of that night in the Narrows, things too horrifying to be believed and Ichabod can feel nothing but pity for the man who caused all that pain and misery.

He passes by addicts and the homeless, shaking his head. He has no change. He needs change. This whole rotten city needs a change.

A crooked shadow lurches out of a doorway. Ichabod steps back into a half-frozen puddle, reaching for his gun.

The shadow is a man. A ragged, dirty creature in a jacket that’s far too big and a hat that’s slipping down over lank, wet hair and a face marred by healing burns. His hands are red as the burns and chapped from the cold. They’re curled into something like claws, as though the ice has set into the bones and made them as brittle as the few icicles that drip from the stop lights. Ichabod lets go of the gun when the man slips and falls. He only has one shoe on and it’s soft canvas, soaked through and nearly black from the grime of the streets.

“Sir?” Ichabod doesn’t step any closer. He has a jagged scar running the length of his ribs that taught him better. “Are you all right?”

The man looks up from his sprawl and Ichabod forgets how to breathe. Staring out from under the hat is Jonathan Crane. The burns and the new pinched hunger can’t disguise his face. He groans and tries to get up. His hands skid in the wet and he crumples again.

Ichabod looks around and there is no one on the street to notice this meeting. No one who will look up from their business of staying alive to care one way or the other. He knows he is going mad because he stoops down next to Crane, out of reach, but close enough that he can smell a month’s worth of filth on the man. “Jonathan? Can you understand me?”

Crane blinks slowly at him and his mouth twists into a sick smile. “Scarecrow.” His voice is as raw as his hands.

“Can you understand me?” Ichabod insists.

The smile fades as Crane shudders and gasps for air, his breath steaming feebly. “Oh god,” he whispers. “Please…help me.”

Ichabod is sworn to do two things. He must serve. He must protect.

He should not be squatting in a squalid gutter with a madman. There is a beautiful woman he left behind in New York who would come if he wrote her. She sends him letters, begging him not to spend Christmas alone, to visit her. He reads between the lines and wonders if it wasn’t love all those years ago before his promotion and transfer. He could go to her and let her bring the sunshine back into his life, coiled in her golden curls and the apple of her cheeks. Ichabod wonders if that is what happiness is.

Happiness is not two weeks from Christmas, numb and bitter, reaching out to drag one of Gotham’s most wanted men to his feet. It is not stripping the coat from Crane to see the straightjacket still on underneath and wrapping his own coat and an arm around the man.

Ichabod does not go to the station. He does not turn Crane in.

To serve and protect.

Jonathan Crane is muttering to himself under his breath and he clings to Ichabod with those clawed hands and Ichabod cannot force his feet to take them to Arkham. He will protect Crane because all the good has been eaten out of the heart of Gotham and maybe, just maybe, if he can save Crane, he can sleep at night. Maybe he can make that sliver of difference that will let him breathe again without feeling like he’s choking to death on the wretchedness of everything.

*~*~*~*

Ichabod’s apartment is warm and dry. He marches Crane straight through to the bathroom where Crane stands, shivering and awkward as Ichabod runs a bath hot enough to steam the mirrors and the little frosted window.

Crane is still whispering to himself and he hasn’t met Ichabod’s eyes since he first fell. Ichabod turns him around and undoes the last few buckles of the straightjacket. He eases the once-white shirt over Crane’s head exposing bruises and old, dried blood. He settles Crane into sitting on the closed lid of the toilet as he kneels on the tiles and removes Crane’s one shoe and what’s left of his socks. Crane’s feet look like his hands, red raw and curled from the cold. Ichabod makes him stand again and slides his trousers down, lifting one foot, then the other, to get them off. Crane doesn’t say anything, he stares at the steam rising from the bath, lips moving silently.

Ichabod rolls up his sleeves and dunks a flannel in the bath. He sits Crane down again and rubs at his hands with the cloth. Crane hisses and jerks them away. He finally looks at Ichabod and the expression on his face is like Ichabod just spat on him.

“It’s going to hurt,” Ichabod explains patiently. “That’s why I didn’t put you in the bath right away. But you have to let me warm your hands and feet.”

Crane eyes him warily but he holds out his hands again. It’s the first sign he’s made that he understands Ichabod at all. The warmth has to hurt, judging by the way Crane’s eyes water, trailing clean tracks through the dirt on his face but eventually Ichabod is able to ease him into the bath. He washes Crane’s hair and the sore skin on his back where the wet straightjacket rubbed and chafed.

“You have pictures of me in your kitchen,” Crane says quietly. He picks up the soap with shaking hands and washes his own arms.

Ichabod nearly drops the flannel into the rapidly blackening water. He pulls the plug and turns the water back on so Crane won’t be sitting in his own filth. “I’m an inspector for your case.”

Crane nods and stares at his own hands as though he’s never seen them before. “And yet you didn’t put me back in Arkham?” he makes it a question. The line of his shoulders says he is afraid.

Ichabod takes a comb and starts trying to get the worst of the knots out of Crane’s hair while it’s still got the conditioner in it. “No.” He tries not to pull but if he’s hurting Crane, the doctor doesn’t let on. “And unless you try to escape or kill me, I won’t.” He helps Crane out of the bath and wraps him in the biggest towel he has before digging his first aid kit out of his medicine cabinet. He cleans Crane’s burns as best he can, but they’re almost a month old and it’s too late for that. None of them look infected but some of them are going to scar.

Crane dresses in a pair of Ichabod’s pajamas. As slender as Ichabod is, they’re still a little too big for Crane. The doctor sits at the kitchen table and eats tomato soup out of the can as Ichabod takes down the photos and cleans up the case files.

“Sometimes I remember what it was like not to be afraid,” Crane says into the can. He uses his fingers to scrape out the very last of the soup and licks them clean. The red soup on his lips looks like blood.

*~*~*~*

Ichabod wonders if he should worry about being killed in his own bed. He doesn’t lock Crane into the spare room when he puts the man to bed, adding an extra blanket and leaving the nightlight on. Somehow he’s not sure he cares if he wakes up. If Crane leaves he’s failed anyway and he’d rather not wake up then.

The creak of floorboards and the soft pad of bare feet doesn’t sound threatening. But it’s been so long since Ichabod had company that he wonders if he wouldn’t be glad to hear a thief, if only for some companionship. Crane has the extra blanket wrapped around him and his eyes are wide and bright in the light from the hallway. He lets the blanket fall to the floor and crawls into the bed. When he curls up, one hand fisted in Ichabod’s t-shirt, one calf over Ichabod’s leg, with his head tucked into the crook of Ichabod’s arm and chest it feels like the world has started turning again.

“You remind me of school,” Crane whispers in the dark. “The black and white pictures in the history books.”

It makes sense to Ichabod as he wraps his arms around Crane, feeling him slowly relax. Even with the door shut again he can still make out the blue of Crane’s eyes.

“Go to sleep,” he says.

He means, you remind me of daylight, and clear water, and being alive. He means, you’re beautiful. Ichabod doesn’t know what he means so he doesn’t say anything else. Crane pulls himself up, just enough that he can kiss Ichabod and Ichabod decides he doesn’t need to say anything anyway.


	2. Coventry Carol

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> grief is a house/ where the chairs/ have forgotten how to hold us/ the mirrors how to reflect us/ the walls how to contain us ― Jandy Nelson

The curtains in Ichabod’s bedroom are red, and the light that filters through paints the white sheets like a murder scene, only the blankets are soaked in sweat instead of blood. The clock on the little table near Ichabod’s head reads 11:41 but the batteries are dead, and it’s been stuck like that for days. It feels early, but lately Ichabod feels like it’s always 5am. It’s a lonely time to be trapped in; a dark and isolated sort of hour but Jonathan has been living in Ichabod’s apartment for almost two weeks and when Jonathan is in his right mind Ichabod wonders if 5am isn’t a place he could happily spend years with him in. 

It’s been almost two weeks since Jonathan crept into Ichabod’s bed and Ichabod has slept well every night that Jonathan has spent wrapped around him, clinging so tightly that Ichabod wakes with bruises, stiff from not moving. They gravitate around each other in a sort of daydream. Ichabod works some days, some nights. Some days, and some nights, Jonathan isn’t sane. They work around each others' absences.

Ichabod puts his bare feet on the cold floor, wincing, and fumbles for his dressing gown, draped over the back of a chair. The entire apartment block lost heating two days ago, the boiler burst from the ice, and Ichabod stuffs his feet into slippers he’d never used before. The slippers, like the dressing gown, are black.

He shuffles into the kitchen, tousled headed and bleary eyed. He boils water for coffee using a camping stove and pours two mugs. Ichabod takes his coffee in a mug that reads, ‘I love New York,’ only the ‘love’ is a heart. He accidentally put the mug on an active burner once and it blackened the bottom, creeping up the sides until ‘New York’ is barely legible and the heart is sooty and smudged. He takes his coffee black and bitter. The other mug is new, and he’s still not sure if it’s in good taste. A pumpkin-headed scarecrow leers out of a curling, twisted landscape and the coffee Ichabod pours into that mug is doused liberally with cream, until the coffee is almost entirely white. He takes both mugs into the living room and sets them on the coffee table. 

A sickly, crippled Christmas tree sits, gnarled and molting in the corner near the television. He turns on the little fairy lights, bright pinpricks of false merriment that outshine the daylight, creeping grey and miserable into the chilly apartment. There are presents under the tree, five of them. One is from the girl back in New York, one from a boy Ichabod fostered for a year, one from the station, one for Jonathan from Ichabod. He doesn’t know where the last one came from. It’s wrapped in old newspapers but under the dying tree, it looks more like it belongs than any of the other gifts.

Ichabod dresses quickly and goes into the bathroom. Jonathan is huddled in the tiny space between the toilet and the sink talking to things that only he can see; talking to things that aren’t there. Ichabod brushes his teeth and pretends he can’t hear the too fast breathing interspersed with tiny, hiccoughing whimpers. He shaves and pretends he doesn’t notice the myriad of self-inflicted scratches beading blood on Jonathan’s naked, shivering body. The tiles are freezing, Ichabod can feel it through two layers of socks, but he brushes his hair and pretends that Jonathan Crane is not shaking himself apart on the floor from cold and fear. He can’t do anything to alleviate the symptoms of the gas, they come and go. All Ichabod can do is let Jonathan have the last shreds of his pride. 

Abandoning a man to his own private hell does not strike Ichabod well but Jonathan begged; it’s the only thing he’s asked of Ichabod, and he begged.

Ichabod sets out the first aid kit and leaves Jonathan alone.

He goes back into the living room, puts on a CD of Christmas carols and curls up on the sofa under a stack of blankets. He doesn’t turn on the television, he shuts his eyes and listens until he hears Jonathan get up and start putting himself back together.

_Bye bye lulle lullay._

The carol sounds like a dirge.

“It is a dirge.” Jonathan looks haggard and worn. He’s wearing three layers of Ichabod’s clothing and he’s still shivering. The burns on his face are all but faded now. There are ridges of scar tissue just over his left eye that dissect his eyebrow and curve down towards the bridge of his nose. Sometimes Ichabod sees Jonathan touching the scars as though they’re on someone else’s face. Jonathan always flinches away when Ichabod tries to touch him there.

Ichabod hadn’t realized he’d spoken aloud. “There’s coffee if you want it,” he says, instead of ‘are you all right?’

Jonathan slides under the blankets next to Ichabod and wraps his elegant fingers around the scarecrow mug. His nails are ragged from scratching at himself and the bathroom tiles. “For all the babies put to the sword on Herod’s command.”

It sounds like madness until Ichabod realizes that Jonathan is still talking about the carol. “Perhaps not the mood setter we need.” Ichabod starts to get up but Jonathan tugs him back with one icy hand.

“I like it.” Jonathan licks his chapped lips and watches the little tree warily. The dancing lights seem to be unsettling for him but he says nothing so Ichabod doesn’t mention it. “It seems a little more fitting than Frosty the Snowman.” He inclines slightly to one side so they’re pressed together from hip to shoulder, then tilts his head so it’s resting on Ichabod’s shoulder. “And ever mourn and say, for thy parting, nor say nor sing…” Jonathan slides back out from under the blankets and gets the newspaper-wrapped present out from under the tree. He sits, curls back into Ichabod, and hands it to him. “Open it now.”

Ichabod unwraps the present. He doesn’t ask where Jonathan got the money from for a gift, he’s not sure he wants to know. It means that Jonathan has left the house at some point during the last two weeks and Ichabod just doesn’t want to know. 

Under the newspaper, nestled in the small box, is a plane ticket to New York.

“Go home,” Jonathan says. His eyes are shut. 

There must be a scratch on the CD because it skips, repeating, catching on one section like an old record. Jonathan’s eyes snap open, wide and terrified. He puts his hands over his ears, moaning and rocking back and forth. Ichabod stares at the plane ticket and then puts it down so he can pretend that his hands aren’t shaking as badly as Jonathan’s usually do.

The choir mourns, trapped in loss at the end of the carol, lamenting the death of innocence. 

Jonathan is crying. He cries silently, the only way Ichabod can tell is from the way the little tree lights shine on the tear tracks. Ichabod gets up and turns the CD player off then he goes back to the sofa and decides that once a day is all he can stand to be a passive observer to Jonathan’s madness. He makes a nest of the blankets and burrows into it with Jonathan, holding Jonathan until the tears stop and his breathing evens out again. Ichabod can feel when Jonathan comes back to himself, they’re pressed so closely together. Jonathan’s feet are still cold and so is the tip of his nose, resting against Ichabod’s throat. 

They lie under the blankets in silence and they will not speak of Jonathan’s madness. Ichabod has done his research and he knows the circumstances, and the psychology, and whole terrible series of events that broke a brilliant, vibrant young child and turned him into a sadistic, cold criminal only to break him again. They will never speak of that either. Ichabod became a police officer because he believed in justice and the rightness of law. He doesn’t quit his job because he can’t let go of the hope that he can help people. Spare the world another Jonathan Crane. Spare another Jonathan Crane from the world.

The spells of insanity are emotionally exhausting for both of them and are frequently physically tiring too when Jonathan’s mania takes a violent form and Ichabod has to restrain him. Now though, Jonathan is warming up, softening in Ichabod’s arms and his breathing deepens to sleep patterns. Ichabod kisses him on the forehead and breaths the stagnant air under the blankets with a soft sigh of contentment. He says; “Merry Christmas, Jonathan,” but Jonathan is already asleep.

*~*~*~*

Jonathan has left the potatoes only partly mashed. They sit, lumpy and congealing in a bowl, next to a half-eaten shortbread Santa cookie. Ichabod, for one awful moment, can’t breathe, then a breeze catches his attention. The balcony door is open and he can see Jonathan silhouetted against the sky.

Ichabod steps outside. He lights a cigarette and leans forward, arms crossed over the rail and blows smoke out towards the city. The wind twists it back so it curls into his eyes and his hair. He feels so used up that he’s surprised his eyes water at all. He still doesn’t know what time it is because he now knows why all the clocks in the house aren’t working. Jonathan broke or dismantled the lot of them days ago while Ichabod was at work. Ichabod supposes it’s a small price to pay because the last time Jonathan had an attack while Ichabod was at work, he took one of the kitchen knives and mutilated Ichabod’s spare bedroom and his own body. Ichabod thinks it might be mid afternoon. The turkey is in the oven at any rate.

The drop in temperature cleared up any chance of snow; the clouds have blown over and the skies are clear. Gotham glitters and shines in the sunlight, bright enough to dazzle Ichabod. He likes it better that way, when it’s so bright he can’t see the decay that’s set into the city, rotting out the heart. He likes it better when he can stare right at it and still imagine that it’s beautiful and good.

“I feel like I haven’t seen the sun in years,” Ichabod says, turning his face towards the unexpected warmth. 

Jonathan turns to look at him and his eyes are the exact shade of the sky. He takes the cigarette from Ichabod and takes a drag. Cupping the back of Ichabod’s neck with one shaking hand, Jonathan pulls him forward for a kiss. He exhales into Ichabod’s mouth, harsh and acrid. Even though it’s far too cold and far too public, Jonathan pushes Ichabod up against the railing, the cigarette falling forgotten, and Ichabod wraps his cold hands in Jonathan’s hair. 

Ichabod is just a little bit taller and a little bit broader in the shoulders than Jonathan, though that isn’t saying much. If push came to shove, Ichabod could physically overpower Jonathan, but Jonathan’s sharp gaze pins Ichabod up against the balcony railing like some kind of monochromatic butterfly in an experiment on what disappointment, bitterness and loneliness can do to a man. Jonathan’s fingers flay him open, exposing his skin to the bite of the wind and to the knife-edge of his eyes. Jonathan smiles a little and Ichabod’s knees tremble when Jonathan licks at his jaw line and twists a finger inside him.

The lubricant on the condom isn’t enough to ease the pain but Ichabod almost likes the sensation because it drags his mind back outside into the wind and the sun with his body and it wakes him up from the stupor he can’t help but sink into. Jonathan is still sadistic enough to enjoy it just because it hurts Ichabod. 

It’s not right, but it works because the broken edges of Jonathan keep jabbing into Ichabod and keeping him from numbness. His hands leave more bruises on Ichabod’s skin, blood dark and stark against the pale white and his teeth are as sharp as the wind. Ichabod grips the railing behind him and the metal is cold enough to burn his palms but Jonathan is warm against his front, one hand wrenching Ichabod’s head back by the hair, the other digging nails into Ichabod’s thigh and Ichabod shivers from the weather and the pain and he bites Jonathan’s lips so as not to cry out.

They smoke another cigarette together, afterwards. Jonathan leans against the railing and Ichabod wraps around him from behind, holding him because Jonathan can’t hold himself together very well. 

“Go home,” Jonathan says again. Ichabod takes a last drag and flicks the butt down to the streets below. He doesn’t say anything so Jonathan continues with; “The flight is for today. If you leave today you can be in New York in time to spend Christmas with the girl.”

Neither of them will say her name. Ichabod because sometimes he thinks he might taint her, all the way from Gotham. Jonathan for his own reasons, but Ichabod suspects that jealousy might be amongst those reasons. 

They go back inside and Ichabod asks, “You wouldn’t miss me?” as though it isn’t a one way ticket. 

Jonathan picks up the potatoes and begins mashing them with a viciousness that isn’t unexpected. “I can take care of myself.” 

It isn’t what Ichabod asked; not the actual words or the real question. What Ichabod means is, ‘Do we need each other?’ He means: would you destroy yourself if I left; am I broken; if I stay can we save each other…

He means: Sometimes I think I love you.

“I already packed your suitcase.” Jonathan puts the potatoes down. “You should go now.”

They both know the precinct wouldn’t say a word. Cops leave all the time and Ichabod is good enough that they would accept his transfer with a shake of their heads and a sad goodbye, but without question. Only a fool couldn’t see that Ichabod is coming apart at the seams. Perhaps when Jonathan says, “I can take care of myself,” what he means is: I can’t take care of you. But Ichabod won’t ask and Jonathan won’t look at him. 

Ichabod turns the oven off and makes the bed. He leaves the first aid kit out and he keeps his keys. Jonathan is back out on the balcony when Ichabod leaves. They don’t say goodbye.

*~*~*~*

There is something about the people in the airport that makes Ichabod want to scream. Men and women trying to get home to their loved ones. Men and women who don’t need to hurry and fly on Christmas day because it’s cheap, because they have no where to go.

Ichabod watches the little television in the terminal. He has ten minutes until his flight boards. The news is on and he watches only because he can’t change the channel and even the bleakness of the news is better than looking at the grey tarmac out the window or the grey faces of his fellow passengers. Batman is on the news again and Ichabod wants to turn away because the sound is off but there is scrolling text that informs all the people that evil has no regard for the holidays. It tells Ichabod something different. He watches footage of a skinny man wrapped in the remains of a straightjacket Ichabod had thrown in the back of his closet with a burlap mask over his head. He watches the Scarecrow fight the Bat and escape, barely, beaten quite badly and probably swinging from a violent attack to one where he is afraid himself. 

The scrolling writing doesn’t tell Ichabod that evil is in Gotham, he knew that anyway. It tells Ichabod that fate is not kind to the Cranes of the world and going to New York will not save him because Gotham isn’t any worse than most cities, it just can’t hide its rot as well. Going to New York will not make him better, and it will condemn Jonathan.

Ichabod watches the little television in the terminal for eight of his ten minutes. The air hostesses are just finishing setting up at the gate, they will be taking tickets soon. Ichabod watches until the report is done and then he walks away.

*~*~*~*

The apartment is freezing because the balcony door was left open, but the heat has come back on. There is blood on the floor, tracking down towards the bedroom. Ichabod leaves his suitcase by the door. As he walks past the kitchen he can see that Jonathan finished making the Christmas dinner. There are two places set out; two plates piled high with turkey, stuffing, potatoes, vegetables, two crackers, two glasses of wine. 

Jonathan didn’t make it to the bed. He’s lying on the floor next to it, still wearing the Scarecrow’s mask.

Ichabod helps him up and to the bathroom and Jonathan won’t look at him. He is sore and cut badly from the Bat Man’s gauntlets and throwing spikes. Ichabod puts a few stitches in the worst of the wounds and bandages the rest. He puts the straight jacket and mask back in the closet, under old hats he doesn’t like and shoes he never wears. Ichabod warms up the dinner and they sit down at the table together.

“I forgot,” Jonathan whispers into a forkful of what looks like mostly whipped cream. Ichabod thinks Jonathan might be a little drunk. They finished two bottles of wine and there was brandy in the dessert. “I set the table and went to get you. I told you to leave, and I forgot.”

There is so much that Ichabod didn’t say for two weeks. “I saw the news.” That’s all that he needs to say because Jonathan was the news, his madness, his alter ego, all of it is there out in the open now. Ichabod wants to laugh, he wants to be sick, and he thinks it’s the best thing he’s ever said in his life because he can breathe again.

Jonathan looks up, finally. He has a livid bruise blooming in hues of purple and green on one cheek. The black eye is going to be spectacular. “I didn’t take very well to remembering you were gone.”

Ichabod gets up from his chair and tips up Jonathan’s face. He kisses Jonathan gently, mindful of his split lip. “Jonathan, taking it badly would have been a crying fit, or a tantrum, or smashing up the apartment. When you take things badly you try and kill people. That isn’t badly, that’s…” Ichabod must be drunk because he can’t finish. It all just seems ridiculous all of a sudden and he laughs. 

Jonathan doesn’t laugh, Ichabod has yet to see him do so, but he smiles and gets up and he takes Ichabod’s hand. They stumble a little on the way to the bedroom and Jonathan has trouble getting his socks off without falling over.

Outside the city is dirty and cold again and Ichabod draws the curtains to block it out. It’s going to take a lot of scrubbing to get Jonathan’s blood out of the carpet and the sheets need changing but Jonathan lies down, naked in the bed and his eyes are perfectly blue, even in the dark.

“I think I might get wood floors put in,” Ichabod says and kisses Jonathan again. They curl up around each other and Jonathan’s too tired to cling hard enough to hurt so it’s warm and comfortable. Ichabod can feel Jonathan’s mouth turn up against his skin and he has to kiss Jonathan then, so he can taste the drunken, contented curve of his smile. “Easier to clean.” He wonders if Jonathan knows that means he’s staying, that they both are.

Jonathan yawns and curls up a little deeper into the blankets and closer to Ichabod. He falls asleep with a smile.

When Ichabod wakes up the clock near his head still reads 11:41 and the light through the curtains stains the sheets bloody but there’s a hue to the whole room. Jonathan in still in the bed, still sleeping. Ichabod goes outside and the sky is as red as the curtains, like someone slashed the throat of god and stained the air with blood. Gotham is black and twisted against the sky and it’s the most beautiful and the most terrible thing that Ichabod thinks he’s ever seen. Jonathan comes out onto the balcony, wrapped in nothing but a sheet. His skin is washed out and striped with red and his eye is bruised black and scarlet. 

He stares out at the city and his eyes are the only thing not black, white or red and for that alone Ichabod thinks it might be love.

Ichabod lights a cigarette and watches Jonathan stare at what looks like the end of the world. Jonathan is shivering in nothing but the thin sheet but he takes hold of Ichabod’s other hand and they stay outside until the cigarette is gone and the sky drains back to grey.


	3. Masks That We Fear

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Love takes off masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within - James A. Baldwin

The snow is worse than ever, even in the city, and it coats the ground in cocaine white, only to be muddied and spoiled by the passing of cars and the slow tread of weary shoes. An abrupt change in temperature has brought on a light morning drizzle and it is destroying the white powder on Ichabod’s balcony. Jonathan is outside; he is barefoot, naked, standing perfectly still. His skin is almost the same grayish blue color as the clouds, though he doesn’t shiver. His eyes are vacant and wide and his lips are chapped raw. 

The doors are old and the glass has crept and warped until Jonathan looks like a painting rather than a person. He looks as though he’s been there forever but there are four bloody scratches on Ichabod’s face that say otherwise, because Jonathan doesn’t react well when this sort of fit takes him. 

Jonathan doesn’t always know who Ichabod is. He forgets, he gets confused, and every time he looks at Ichabod with the fear or the anger in those haunted blue eyes Ichabod has to turn away, just for a moment. 

It’s the second time this has happened. The first time was four days ago and Ichabod had to put the straightjacket on Jonathan and strap him to the bed to make him stay down and stay inside. Ichabod doesn’t know how long Jonathan has been standing out there this time; he was already outside when Ichabod came home from work. 

Ichabod sits on the sofa and holds his unopened mail. One of the letters is from New York. The date on it is old. It’s been sitting there, waiting for him for days and days, but Ichabod hasn’t had the heart to open it. He still doesn’t so instead he watches Jonathan out of the corner of his eye and it falls from his fingertips and slides across the floorboards under the coffee table. 

He gets up and he goes into the bathroom. There is nothing useful in the medicine cabinets, he has been through them, and been through them, and been through them. Ichabod empties out all the bottles of aspirin, cough syrup, shampoo, the toothpaste and the shaving foam; he throws the first aid kit on the floor with the rest of their toiletries. There is a bottle of Zoloft hidden right at the back from three years ago when the doctors told Ichabod he needed a holiday. He didn’t take the pills. He didn’t take the holiday. It doesn’t matter, they won’t help Jonathan.

Ichabod stands in the wreckage of his bathroom and casts about helplessly for something, for anything that might make a difference. He doesn’t slump in defeat, it’s too late for that, his back has been bowed under the strain for much longer than Jonathan has been in his life, but he shuts his eyes and wishes for some respite from the ache in his chest. He won’t get it. Ichabod picks up a towel and for a moment he stands there, stupidly clutching it, then he hurls it away from him. He wrenches the bar the towels hang on from the wall and swings it into the mirror, against the wall, into the tiles above the bathtub. Ichabod lets the bar slip from his fingers as the rage slips out of his grasp. He doesn’t have the energy to sustain that sort of anger; he needs it to keep himself together and to keep Jonathan together.

He picks up the towel as he leaves the bathroom. Ichabod hasn’t broken a sweat and he isn’t panting in anger. Even his hair is mostly in place and his day to day clothing doesn’t wrinkle that easily. Except for the ruin behind him, everything is as it ought to be. He will endure. There isn’t any other option.

The straightjacket is in the closet, where Ichabod left it. He takes it out and slings it calmly over one arm with the towel. He will try to coax Jonathan inside and if that doesn’t work, he will drag him in. 

Ichabod is halfway to the balcony when the doorbell rings.

No one rings his doorbell. He pays the landlady promptly and he never speaks to his neighbors. He can think of no one who might want his company and he told the last Jehovah’s witnesses that he was a Satanist because it meant they’d blacklist him. No one ever rings his doorbell and Ichabod panics.

He glances wildly towards the balcony, at the straightjacket in his hands, and back to Jonathan again. He wonders if they’ve finally come for Jonathan.

Ichabod goes back to the closet as the ringing is accompanied by knocking. There is a safe in the closet where he keeps his badge and his gun. He takes the gun out and his hands are shaking. Ichabod doesn’t know if he can use it to keep Jonathan safe but he takes the safety off and shuts the closet with his foot. He can hear indistinct shouting from the other side of the front door and now he is sweating and his breath comes in short gasps. Part of him wonders if it wouldn’t be better for both of them if he let the authorities take Jonathan away. The scratches on his face and the destruction of his bathroom say yes but the bruises on his hips and the sharp twist he gets in his guts when he thinks about losing Jonathan say no.

He presses his eye to the peephole and he nearly drops the gun. Ichabod opens the door and is greeted with, “Merry Christmas, New Years and Valentine’s day!” He stands there, gun in one hand, straightjacket and towel in the other and can’t think of a damn thing to say in return.

There is an angel in the hallway and for a moment Ichabod doesn’t know which is real, the girl he thought he’d left behind, all rosy cheeks and warm smiles, or Jonathan, vacant and cold, breaking down out on the balcony.

Her smile fades and Katrina opens her mouth to say something. Ichabod does the only thing he can do; He opens his door and ushers her in. She walks past him and she looks at him as though he’s lost his mind. It’s quite possible.

“Excuse me,” Ichabod says, and puts the safety back on the gun. He sets it down on the coffee table next to his unopened mail. “This will only take a moment.”

Katrina stares at him as he opens the balcony doors. It’s so cold outside.

“Jonathan, come inside.”

Jonathan turns and there is no recognition in his eyes. Ichabod tells himself it doesn’t matter as he grabs hold of one skinny wrist and the back of Jonathan’s neck. Jonathan is cold and hard against Ichabod’s hands as he drags him in off the balcony. It isn’t easy, though Jonathan is in no condition to fight back, and Ichabod is going to be bruised as well as scratched. He pins Jonathan to the floor of the living room, face down, and throws the towel over Jonathan’s head like one might do for a spooked horse. He half lies on top of him to warm him up as Jonathan struggles himself into exhaustion. It takes a little longer to wrestle him into the straightjacket. Jonathan starts to scream. It’s a broken, frozen sound and it cracks and splinters into sobbing. Ichabod spares a hand to snag a blanket off the sofa so he can bundle the rest of Jonathan up, partly for decency and partially because he’s cold and wet and Ichabod can’t apologize for not helping him, he can only do what he can.

He drags Jonathan down the hall into the bedroom and shoves him onto the bed. Last time this happened he ripped up a spare set of sheets and the long strips are still attached to the frame of the bed. He ties Jonathan down and pulls the duvet up over him.

Katrina stands in the doorway, one hand over her mouth. There are tears running down her face and Ichabod wants to hate her for that. In all the weeks that he and Jonathan have struggled through the trials of being a Crane neither of them has broken down. Jonathan, when in his right mind, has never once complained, has never been angry, or upset. He takes this latest blow the same way he takes everything else, with a quiet sort of bitterness. Ichabod is simply resigned. Neither of them will ever get the better of the world and they both know it. They don’t need to, they can limp onwards, crooked shadows, supporting one another. Her tears, her pity, her fear, they are wasted in Gotham. They are wasted on Jonathan who would sneer at her if he wasn’t strapped, raving, to their bed. They are wasted on Ichabod and he doesn’t know why.

Ichabod goes into the bathroom, stepping over broken glass and cracked plaster. He picks up the box of tissues from the counter and hands them to Katrina. He says, “Would you like some tea?”

She doesn’t answer so he goes into the kitchen and puts the kettle on the stove. Katrina follows him after a moment or two. “He’s…”

Ichabod takes down his mug from the shelf. The only other mug is Jonathan’s and Jonathan doesn’t drink tea, so he takes down a drinking glass instead. The routine of making tea is soothing and he doesn’t look at Katrina as he goes through the motions of getting out the milk, sugar and tea bags. “You’ve come at a bad time,” Ichabod hedges. “He’ll be better in a while.” She takes two sugars and a splash of milk, he remembers that much. “Though not, I fear, in good humor.”

“He’s the one from the news. Crane. The same as you.”

Ichabod pours the water into the mug and the cup, hoping the hot water doesn’t crack the glass. “Jonathan,” he agrees. “Doctor Crane, actually.” He hands her the mug and wonders if he should apologize for the mess in the bathroom, for the mess that Jonathan is, for the mess he’s become. The tea scalds his mouth and it tastes funny until he remembers that he’s more used to drinking coffee these days. He’s not had tea since he moved to Gotham, the box of little bags has been sitting unused for years.

Katrina stares down into her mug. “I don’t understand,” she says softly.

“Nor do I.” Ichabod pours his tea down the sink and puts the coffee pot on instead. Jonathan will want some anyway when he comes back to himself. “It’s nice to see you.”

*~*~*~*

Jonathan has recovered in time for a rather strained dinner. They sit at the table making uncomfortable small talk. Jonathan’s hands are shaking almost too badly for him to managed fork and knife. Food falls off his cutlery and he has to hold his glass with two hands. 

Katrina is trying not to stare, or ask the questions that Ichabod is sure she will eventually ask: Why wouldn’t you come back to New York, why are you harboring a madman, what happened to you? He wonders if she can tell that they’ve been sleeping together. She’s been offered the guest bedroom and there’s only Ichabod’s bedroom other than that. She hasn’t asked where Jonathan will sleep and Ichabod isn’t sure he can bring himself to tell her. The shine and light she brought with her is already starting to dim.

It’s not helped by Jonathan’s temper. Jonathan is not in one of his better moods. Ichabod has never seen him so furious when he’s been in his right mind and every word he speaks is acid, it’s poison, and it’s all directed at Katrina. 

She calls him Doctor Crane. He speaks to her as though she’s a slow child. Once, Katrina slips and calls him Scarecrow. Jonathan smiles viciously and doesn’t say anything to her after that.

Ichabod goes out onto the balcony and stands in Jonathan’s footprints and has a cigarette. He’s not surprised when Jonathan follows him out. The door shuts quietly behind him. “I don’t remember doing that to the bathroom,” he says, and takes the cigarette Ichabod offers him.

“You didn’t.” Ichabod lights Jonathan’s cigarette. “I did.” He smiles wryly and flicks ash over the edge of the balcony railing. “I thought I’d redecorate.”

Jonathan snorts. “Of course.” His tone is dry and sarcastic but Ichabod can hear the relief in it. Jonathan’s memory is shaky enough and Ichabod can see the knife twist every time Jonathan realizes he’s forgotten something else. They’re almost finished when Jonathan turns to Ichabod and says, “I want her gone.”

Ichabod sighs and lights another cigarette with the butt of the old one. “Katrina’s a friend.”

“I want her gone,” Jonathan hisses, dropping his cigarette so he can clutch at his head. “I can’t stand her.” Ichabod gently takes one of Jonathan’s hands and pulls it away from his hair, twining their fingers together. “I can’t stand her,” Jonathan says again and he stares out over the city as though he’ll turn back into the statue he was before.

“Happy Valentine’s Day, Jonathan.” Ichabod didn’t mean to say that. It startles a laugh out of him and Jonathan stares at him in half in bewilderment and half in contempt. It’s oddly endearing so Ichabod kisses him and laughs again.

Jonathan pulls his hand away and shoves them in his pockets. “I’m sorry about your face.” It’s the first time he’s apologized for anything he’s done whilst in one of his fits.

Ichabod shrugs and flicks the half-smoked butt over the side of the railing. “I’m sorry about the bathroom.”

“You’re an idiot,” Jonathan declares and goes back inside. It sounds a lot like: I love you, to Ichabod.

*~*~*~*

He hears them in the middle of the night.

For some reason or another, Jonathan had taken two blankets and a pillow and announced that he would be sleeping on the sofa and that Katrina was welcome to have his bed. Never mind that he hadn’t slept in the guest room since the day he’d arrived and it was glaringly obvious. Never mind that the walls of the spare room were scored with knife marks and stained with blood from one of Jonathan’s fits. He even asked her, a sweet smile on his face that seemed crueler and nastier than anything he’d said at dinner, if she’d be more comfortable if he slept with the straightjacket on.

In the middle of the night Ichabod hears Katrina leave her room and go to where Jonathan sleeps on the couch. He doesn’t want to know what they have to say to one another but he crawls out of the bed that feels too big and far too cold without Jonathan and stands at the door to eavesdrop.

“You don’t fool me.”

He thinks it is Jonathan speaking but it is Jonathan who replies and he winces to hear the spite in Katrina’s voice. He’s not heard her sound so disillusioned since he mistook her father for the mastermind in a series of murders back in New York.

“I haven’t made the effort to.” Jonathan sounds tired. “Since you’ll be gone soon enough.”

“You ought to crawl back to the pit you came from,” she hisses, low, so quiet that Ichabod can barely hear her. “Turn yourself in for the madman and murderer you are and leave Ichabod be.”

There is a long pause and Ichabod wonders if he’s missed Jonathan’s reply, then, “I told him to leave at Christmas. He was supposed to go back to New York, and you, and he came back here.” There is an edge of madness creeping into Jonathan’s voice. “Here in Hell…You couldn’t understand.”

He can hear Katrina stand up again. “I am doubtful that there is any human decency in you, but if you care at all for Ichabod, you will turn yourself in before you drag him down with you.” Ichabod creeps back to his bed before she can discover him listening. He can only be glad that Jonathan isn’t mad enough to even consider what she’s said.

*~*~*~*

Jonathan is not mad enough to consider what Katrina said, but apparently he is still sane enough. When Ichabod wakes up, Jonathan is gone.

“You should come back to New York with me,” Katrina says. She’s made breakfast and it smells delicious. She is beautiful and somehow the daylight streams into the apartment and catches in her hair, making her glow again. Even here. Even in this city. “Gotham isn’t good for you.”

Ichabod walks around his apartment. The clocks are broken and the bathroom is a wreck. There is a straightjacket, a burlap mask, and bottle of Zoloft that say he and Jonathan are as broken and wrecked as their apartment. 

He says he’s sorry. She says if he leaves she won’t be there when he comes back. Ichabod puts on his coat and tells her she’s beautiful. He thinks he hears her crying as he shuts the door behind him.

*~*~*~*

There is a small snowdrift near the apartment, where the ploughs pushed up enough snow that it hasn’t all melted yet. It’s dirty and miserable, out of the way, back between two buildings and stained with the slush from passing cars. Jonathan is curled up, just barely visible to someone looking in all the wrong places. He isn’t wearing anything but one of Ichabod’s longer shirts, he’s an awful shade of gray and there’s an open bottle of pills with Ichabod’s name on it next to him.

Ichabod takes off his coat and wraps it around Jonathan. He doesn’t check to see if he’s breathing. He doesn’t want to know. 

Halfway up the elevator to the apartment Jonathan opens his eyes and says, “Well, that was a dazzling success.” He coughs and shivers miserably in Ichabod’s arms.

Ichabod’s knees go out from under him and he kneels on the dirty floor of the elevator, clutching Jonathan to him and he weeps. Jonathan lifts one icy hand to his face and traces the scratches he left on Ichabod’s skin and Ichabod catches hold of Jonathan’s hand to warm it.

Jonathan’s wheezing, he probably has something like pneumonia. “I figured you’d need them more than I would.”

The bottle in Ichabod’s pocket is open, but it’s still full.

“You’re an idiot,” Ichabod says. It sounds a lot like, ‘I love you.’


	4. World Without Colour

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Man needs color to live; it's just as necessary an element as fire and water. - Fernand Leger

October is when it begins; rolling in on the back of a thunderstorm that floods the gutters, tears branches from trees and frays the flags snapping at the tops of their poles. It creeps in, a slow, chill fog and it is not the amber tones of Stevenson’s London that obscure a violent change and permit depravity. It is an insidious, wretched dulling of the senses, muting the city into shades of gray and gray until bright blue Wellington boots, or the bloody leaves clinging to the trees are unbearable against the monochromes. 

Jonathan has not been well these past months. His attacks have been more violent, he calls himself the Scarecrow once a week, at least, and Ichabod has found that while he and Jonathan are perfectly compatible, in their own way, Ichabod and the Scarecrow do not get on. The Scarecrow has tried to strangle Ichabod. He has tried to stab, smother and poison Ichabod. But Jonathan, despite Ichabod’s best efforts is unwell physically as well as mentally and Ichabod can still wrestle the Scarecrow to the floor and force the straight-jacket onto him. 

It isn’t the Scarecrow that Ichabod fears; it’s the way that Jonathan withdraws afterwards. Jonathan, never overly verbose, is now silent for large stretches at a time. He picks at his food and paces the apartment at night. He needs medication. Ichabod makes him take a multivitamin every morning because that’s all he has.

They go to bed early, the night before Halloween. Ichabod’s schedule is complicated. Around the 31st, when vandalism is so high and the holiday is used as a cover for breaking and entering, assault and murder, he works nights, and days, and has been on call all week. The GCPD never makes his timetable official, but everyone knows Ichabod has no family or friends so to speak of and that he will work, and work, and work. They call him an idealist. Jonathan says Ichabod is clinically depressed, repressive and emotionally masochistic. He makes Ichabod eat peanut butter sandwich and calls it a mild anti-depressant. He doesn’t mention the bottle of medication Ichabod ought to be taking because if he was right, and Ichabod was sick, then that might be the end of the tenuous way they support one another.

Ichabod draws the curtains against the light shining into the bedroom. The so-called Bat Signal is very clear since there are so many clouds but he doesn’t think Jonathan has noticed it. Jonathan’s wearing reading glasses as he flips intently through a medical journal he asked Ichabod to pick up for him from the library as he drinks lukewarm coffee, almost white from all the milk in it. “I’ll only be another minute,” Jonathan says, as Ichabod gets into the bed. He turns out the light after less than that and wraps himself around Ichabod. His hands are shaking and after a moment Ichabod gets up again to fetch the straightjacket so they’ll have it to hand, just in case.

*~*~*~*

The blood on Ichabod’s hands has already dried and is flaking off onto the unwashed, crumpled sheets, and he’s left a trail of footprints from the bathroom to the bed. Under the blood Ichabod’s fingers are stained a faded blue from dying Easter eggs. There are still eggs in their bedroom, on their nightstand, one of them cracked from Jonathan trying to hit the alarm clock, and missing. There are eggs in the bathroom, on the cistern. Ichabod can’t see the dye on them either, but it’s there, underneath the blood.

It is raining outside, and has been all day. Not properly, just a dismal sort of wetness that sporadically worsens into actual raindrops. Ichabod is still damp, and his hair curls at the ends. The moisture sliding down his face is only rainwater.

Jonathan is dead.

The bedroom is cold and dark, and a fine mist creeps through the open window and through the broken glass of the balcony doors. All the lights are smashed and the broken light bulbs cut into Ichabod’s feet. Some of the blood is his, but it’s hard to tell. There’s so much of it. It’s smeared over the wreckage of the kitchen, on the table and on the knives. It’s all over the bathroom. It’s all over Ichabod’s gun in the bathroom, already drying to brown, under the little bone shards of Jonathan’s skull. There is very little left of the back of Jonathan’s skull.

Jonathan is sprawled inelegantly on the sheets, where Ichabod carried him. He is cold to the touch, and Ichabod has already closed Jonathan’s eyelids. Ichabod sits on the bed next to Jonathan and doesn’t cry. He wipes his hands clean as he can on a towel that is already filthy and curls up on the bed with his head on Jonathan’s still, cold chest. The faded dye on his hands makes his skin the same hue as Jonathan’s. 

Everything hurts. He is still sore from the night before. Jonathan was sane, as sane as he ever was, but he fucked Ichabod with a passion close to mania and he wept afterwards, clinging to Ichabod, soothing, trying to pet away all the aches and pains he had only just dispensed. He’d crawled down into the tangled, stained mess of sheets and sucked Ichabod until he was hard. For the first time Ichabod had fucked Jonathan; gently, slowly, as careful and as tender as Jonathan had been ruthless and cruel. Ichabod wonders if that’s what finally broke Jonathan.

His throat is raw from not crying, his eyes burn from not crying, his stomach aches from not crying.

*~*~*~*

Ichabod wakes up sobbing, and he can’t stop, he can’t hold it in. Next to him the clock reads 3:55am and Jonathan lies still and quiet in the dark but Jonathan is not cold. He is sweaty and flushed from sleeping next to Ichabod under too many blankets. The clock makes a soft ticking sound as it changes to 3:56am. It’s October anyway. Ichabod clutches at Jonathan, fingers grinding into the back of his head, into his whole, un-splintered skull, over the curve of his chest and digging into the pulse at his throat. Jonathan’s hair sticks out at all angles, black as Ichabod’s in the dark. 

Jonathan grunts and opens one eye. “What?” he demands, but he props himself up on one elbow and licks at the tears on Ichabod’s face. “What?” Jonathan asks again, not softly enough for compassion, but almost. His eyes are an unbearable, Wellington-boot blue.

Ichabod shoves him away and stumbles to the bathroom. The florescent light flickers on white, white tiles, before the bulb catches and stays, lighting up the mirror and the cracked plaster that Ichabod just never got around to having fixed. It highlights every one of the shadows under Ichabod’s eyes and under his cheekbones. There is no blood. Ichabod turns on the shower as Jonathan trails sleepily after him. The water is cold, only cold, and he steps under, still wearing his boxer shorts and scrubs at himself, desperately trying to wash off the sweat and the tears and the blood that isn’t there. He drops to his knees and vomits until he’s choking up bile. Planted unsteadily on the tile, Ichabod’s hands are pale and his nails are cut down to the quick but there is no dye and there is no blood. Jonathan sits on the closed lid of the toilet and watches him.

He gets up when Ichabod can do nothing more than huddle in a miserable heap on the floor of the shower. Jonathan snaps the water off and gives Ichabod a lengthy, tired look. “Get up,” he says, and then doesn’t wait for Ichabod to listen, just digs his fingers into the soft skin of Ichabod’s upper arm and pulls until Ichabod’s shoulder hurts and he stands. Jonathan is not a patient enough man to play nursemaid and he’s not nearly sane enough either, but he wraps a bath sheet around Ichabod’s shoulders and rubs, stroking Ichabod’s wet hair back from his face. Ichabod stands dumbly, unable to rouse himself enough to pull off the clinging, sopping boxers but Jonathan’s shaking hands warm his face and Jonathan gnaws at his own bottom lip. He looks more distressed the longer Ichabod does nothing. Jonathan does not look after Ichabod. It’s never worked that way.

You’d gotten into the knives, and there was blood everywhere, Ichabod wants to say. I don’t know if you shot yourself or if I did it. 

Ichabod turns the light off in the bathroom and lets the towel fall away. He pulls his boxers off before turning the shower back on, warm this time, and pulls Jonathan in with him. “It’s nothing,” Ichabod says and kisses Jonathan to make Jonathan bite his lip instead.

*~*~*~*

Jonathan is already awake when Ichabod’s alarm clock goes off. “Be late for work,” he says and licks at the line of Ichabod’s jaw. He looks exhausted and, under the sheets, his hands are clumsy on Ichabod’s body. It is very likely that Jonathan didn’t sleep for the rest of the night.

“I can’t.” Ichabod tries to sit up, but Jonathan is heavier than he looks and he’s clinging hard enough that his broken, bitten fingernails cut into Ichabod’s skin. 

Jonathan is breathing too fast and the coherency in his expression is slipping. “Be late for work,” he says, and it sounds more unsure than Ichabod can handle. Ichabod reaches under the blanket and grabs Jonathan’s wrists, prying his hands away from his body. Jonathan whimpers and pushes his face into Ichabod’s shoulder. “Be late,” he says again and then, desperately, “you can fuck me if you want.”

Ichabod jerks his hands away and his fingers are smeared with Jonathan’s blood. Jonathan reaches for him and Ichabod can see why, he can see what staying sane cost Jonathan this morning. Jonathan’s arms are sliced open, and sliced open, and again, in short, precise lines. Like each one was calculated to give him a certain amount of time. Ichabod’s mouth floods with saliva. He wants to throw up again but he chokes and swallows down the bile. Ichabod calls the station and tells them he’s going to be a bit late and then he takes Jonathan to the bathroom. He cleans and bandages Jonathan’s arms as Jonathan starts to mutter to himself. He steers Jonathan back into the bedroom and helps him into the straightjacket while Jonathan’s still sane enough not to fight him. 

Jonathan lies down of his own volition but turns his head away when Ichabod tries to smooth his hair back. He starts to rave before Ichabod has him fully strapped to the bed but it’s easy for Ichabod to put a knee on Jonathan’s chest and hold him down while he finishes. Jonathan struggles and spits and Ichabod hadn’t seen Jonathan’s mania without the Scarecrow for a while, but there it is, hollowing Jonathan out into vacancy, fear and an anger so twisted up in itself that Ichabod still doesn’t know if Jonathan is screaming at him, at nothing, or at himself.

Ichabod isn’t late for work.

*~*~*~*

“We could go out,” Ichabod says. 

Jonathan is still strapped to the bed, eight hours later because Ichabod couldn’t get to the apartment and back during his lunch break. He’s pissed himself and the room is sharp and sour with the smell. Jonathan won’t look at Ichabod and he demanded that Ichabod not touch him. Ichabod doesn’t know what else to do but comply. 

“This evening,” he clarifies, when Jonathan finally turns his head to give him a disbelieving stare. “As everyone will be in fancy dress anyway.”

He comes over to the bed and sits down next to Jonathan. He doesn’t ask again if Jonathan wants to be let up, and he takes Jonathan’s silence for agreement and this time he sits on the toilet lid while Jonathan showers. It isn’t until they’re both at the kitchen table, eating leftover spaghetti from the night before, that Jonathan really makes his opinions on Ichabod’s idea known. He is not kind. Ichabod is too tired to defend himself so he just nods and dabs at the pasta sauce on his mouth. 

They stay in, because Jonathan is insane and Ichabod is broken and it only works inside the apartment, and it barely works. Jonathan won’t turn on the television or go out onto the balcony because he doesn’t want to see anyone in costume. He cleans the kitchen and the bedroom while Ichabod naps on the couch. He hasn’t been outside since Valentine’s day. They have lived together for almost a year. It feels like longer, forever, an endless sort of purgatory they’re both inmates of.

Jonathan comes and sits on the sofa, waking Ichabod up. “I was going to make pumpkin pie,” he says. “Actually, I was going to carve a pumpkin but I didn’t think using knives would be prudent.”

“I’m sorry,” Ichabod says and feels like he’s saying it because Jonathan can’t be around knives and he spent the day in a straightjacket and he isn’t well, he isn’t well. Jonathan waves the apology away and tucks his hands into the folds of Ichabod’s sweater to keep them warm.

“It’s getting worse,” Jonathan says softly and Ichabod’s throat is too tight to apologise again because all he can think of is the color of Easter eggs and blood on the walls.

*~*~*~*

Ichabod goes back out two hours later when the GCPD calls and wants to know if he can possibly come in because all hell has broken loose and someone’s got to be out there to clean up after the Joker and the Batman have finished their rampage through the city. 

Jonathan gets him his scarf and finds his warmer gloves shoved into another coat’s pockets. He goes so far as to kiss the corner of Ichabod’s mouth before Ichabod leaves. He is not there when Ichabod gets back. 

There is a week’s worth of meals, neatly wrapped in tinfoil in the fridge. The phonebook is on the kitchen table with markers for bathroom and door repair. There is a carefully penciled note next to Ichabod’s anti-depression medication that says nothing but the phone number and address of a psychiatrist. The Scarecrow’s mask is gone. So is the straightjacket. There is another note inside Jonathan’s coffee cup that doesn’t say, I love you, only that Ichabod should keep his spare key under the mat so Jonathan can let himself in when he gets back. On the television the newscaster reports that Jonathan Crane, presumed dead, has turned himself in at Arkham Asylum.


	5. Paper Cranes - An Interlude

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Only on paper has humanity yet achieved glory, beauty, truth, knowledge, virtue, and abiding love. - George Bernard Shaw

_I’ve been voluntarily trapped been in Arkham for fifty five days, which is 1320 hours, or 79200 minutes, or 4752000 seconds bound up like an animal and force fed and force fed drugs to keep me down and keep me up and down and down and down to the basement where they put the ones who don’t ever come out don’t ever see the sun not that there’s sun to be seen in Gotham but down with the orange and grey and the ugly stupidity of the inmates and guards and doctors and drugs to keep me talking and silent and drugs to make me Jonathan again and Jonathan isn’t so hard to find these days under the Scarecrow and they’ve got me on everything they can think of and I can’t keep track can’t get my head around what’s in my blood and in my brain because they change them and they tell me I’m better and worse and I’m never getting better because I’m the Scarecrow and this is better this is it this is the only way that the Scarecrow is and they’re looking for Jonathan for sense but they won’t get it out of anyone because the Scarecrow isn’t talking oh no because I’ve got plans for Gotham I’ll get out and then I’ll wreak his bloody revenge just as soon as I can get my head straight around all these pills that are making everything blurry and strange but it’s somewhere under all the anger and the fear which isn’t me and it’s what cracked me but now it’s just the gas and I can’t break any more before the Scarecrow will start to crack too and that keeps me tighter more than it used to but I can wait for just a little longer._

Unlike most things at Arkham, this office is brown. The carpeting and the desk and the ugly, worn sofa goes with the orange uniforms in a way that suggests the seventies. The room smells like it hasn’t been properly aired out since then. Jonathan Crane sits hunched up in a corner of the sofa and folds Rorschach tests into origami. He’s on an incredibly potent cocktail of drugs and this current mixture has made it difficult for him to even remember his own name. It keeps him calm though which has been important as the impending holiday made him difficult to manage. He’s been singing the Coventry carol for days.

“Jonathan,” says his psychotherapist, although Jonathan has told him repeatedly not to call him by his first name. “Please answer the question.”

Jonathan looks up at the latest in a rapidly dwindling collection of inkblots. His eyes are glassy but he takes the paper and runs his fingers over the outline and he’s clearly trying to think. They’ve cut his nails down to the quick to prevent him from scratching the orderlies but most of the scars on his hands and arms have faded now that he’s stopped scratching himself. The latest batch of anti-toxin made a marked improvement and the effects of the gas will probably be cured by the next round.

Jonathan touches the bridge of his nose as though he’s pushing up the glasses he’s not allowed to wear. “I want to go home,” he says, which isn’t the answer to the question but is the first sign of cognizance that Jonathan has shown in a week. 

“And where is home?” Police still want to know how he managed to stay hidden for almost a year.

Jonathan smiles and sets another paper crane down on the desk.


	6. Serve and Protect

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Too much sanity may be madness and the maddest of all, to see life as it is and not as it should be. -Miguel de Cervantes

Gotham has been swamped by a fog for days. It’s a cold, white fog that sweeps through the streets and blinds everyone, covers up the dirt and the grime and stings everyone’s cheeks rosy and pink. It muffles sound almost as well as snow. It should make up for the lack of snow and the lack of cheer this holiday season. There are spider webs threading the railing of the balcony, silvered and frosted and Ichabod sits on the balcony in the cold and smokes his way through an entire pack of cigarettes. He thinks the silver-frosted city and the silver-frosted web ought to be beautiful and that he should feel better to see them, but mostly he just feels a little nauseous from smoking so many cigarettes.

Ichabod doesn’t like to be alone. He isn’t used to it any more. For a few days after Jonathan leaves, Ichabod haunts his apartment, picking the tinfoil on the food apart but not eating anything, and not cleaning it up. He changed the sheets on the bed and now he sleeps on the sofa because he can’t bear to sleep where it ought to smell of Jonathan and doesn’t. He dreams over and over that it’s Easter and there’s blood on the bathroom floor but it’s his body, not Jonathan’s. It doesn’t take a genius to figure it out, but he wakes up sweating and shaking every time. He hasn’t slept properly since Halloween. 

His days go something like this; he wakes up disgruntled and groggy and he’s usually in the shower before he’s really awake, mechanically scrubbing off the night-sweats. He swallows a multivitamin down with a glass of orange juice and dresses, never managing to get it right for the changing temperatures. He goes to work but he can’t remember details. At work everything looks skewed somehow under the fluorescent lights around his desk that make his eyes ache. Ichabod rarely turns the lights on in the apartment anymore and he works in his office solely by the glow of the computer screen and a soft side lamp. He stares at paperwork, filling out forms because somehow the red tape of his cases seems so much easier to deal with than anything involving real thought. He drinks coffee constantly, just to stay coherent. 

He patrols in the afternoons, not actively working on any of his cases, just wandering through downtown, through the bad parts of Gotham, circling closer to the Narrows every day. He thinks about visiting Jonathan but he isn’t sure if the Scarecrow would be allowed visitors and he’s almost certain Jonathan would hate him for doing it. Jonathan has more pride than he can afford, Ichabod misses that. 

Ichabod misses Jonathan’s arrogance, and the way he would sigh, with something not quite a sneer hovering at the corner of his mouth. He misses the way Jonathan would put his cold hands on his stomach in bed and Jonathan’s terrible cooking. He misses the way Jonathan’s hair felt under his hands and the unexpected curve of a smile or Jonathan’s rusty, startled laugh. The apartment feels very empty, but it’s not as though Jonathan had laughed much in those last months and Ichabod doesn’t miss the helplessness. He doesn’t miss it, mostly because he still feels it. Jonathan has been gone for two months and Ichabod doesn’t know what to do. He has gone through the motions these past few weeks. The bathroom has been refitted and retiled. The balcony doors are fixed and his spare room has been repapered. If he follows the routine he can get off the sofa in the morning and get to work. He even gets his suits dry-cleaned. 

The invitation and plane ticket to New York for Christmas come in the mail, a week before the 25th; startling him out of the routine he’s settled into. It’s been almost a year since Katrina and Ichabod have spoken, not since Valentine’s day; she says she’s sorry and she hopes that he’ll spend Christmas with her, now that Jonathan is getting the help he needs. She doesn’t say that Jonathan is criminally insane and probably a murderer but Ichabod knows how to read between the lines. He believes that she means well. Ichabod has years’ worth of time off that he hasn’t taken and he barely spends his paychecks. If he wanted to, he could travel, see the world past Gotham, and he could certainly go to New York for Christmas. 

Ichabod is having difficulty walking without dragging his feet. He has trouble not just sitting down on the floor of the monorail and giving up. Going to the airport, seeing all the lightness and brightness of Katrina might wear him out altogether.

He writes back, because that’s what he ought to do, and declines. The letter says he’s sorry. It also says that he’s doing well. It’s a very formal letter, since he can’t really remember what it was like when he used to write her love-notes and draw pictures in the margins. 

Ichabod spends Christmas Eve working late. He sleeps through most of Christmas Day but he wakes up in time to pick at the leftovers in the fridge and stare blankly at the movies on television. The apartment isn’t decorated but Ichabod digs out his cd of carols and puts that on before going back to sleep again.

*~*~*~*

The GCPD have rules about how much overtime Ichabod can work, which they usually ignore, but the police chief comes to Ichabod’s office and tells him to stay home for New Year’s Eve. It’s expected that there will be an attack from one of what the press have dubbed super-villains but the chief reassures Ichabod that they can manage without him for a few nights. Ichabod doesn’t really care. He’s thinking he’s glad the super-villain won’t be Jonathan because it’s cold out and the straight-jacket isn’t very warm. He likes to think they’re treating Jonathan well, despite everything he knows about Arkham. Ichabod focuses on wondering if they know Jonathan doesn’t like having his scars touched and if they’ve given him an extra blanket now that it’s almost January. He thinks about intellectual discussions during therapy and if there’s enough protein in the cafeteria food. Ichabod does not think about injections, patient abuse, shock therapy, restraints, force feeding, patient experimentation, over-medication, or a plethora of other ills he’s read about in reports on Arkham. He doesn’t think about how Jonathan used to be in charge of all that.

Ichabod takes the monorail home. It’s cleaner, now that Wayne Enterprises has taken an interest in cleaning up the city but the carriage still smells of urine and there’s a small gang of angry looking children stealing the line map and graffiting the doors. They come over to Ichabod and demand to know what he’s going to do about it. Ichabod looks up tiredly and tell them, at this point, he’s either going to do nothing, or he’s going to crack under the strain and start shooting wildly. He’s still wearing his gun and the children actually leave. Ichabod calls after them that they ought to go home, or back to school. He thinks Jonathan might have found it funny, even if the boys didn’t.

The city is in chaos long before he makes it home. Ichabod can see the pandemonium on the streets and he can hear the screaming. Even away from the very center of Gotham the panic makes people abandon their homes and gangs throw bricks into windows as the Batman and whoever it is he’s fighting wreak destruction over downtown.

Ichabod gets off the monorail and navigates the three blocks to his apartment. He thinks he might get drunk and watch the riots on tv. It would be a fitting end to the year. He doesn’t turn on the lights, but he doesn’t need them to find the remote control or the wine rack. As it turns out, Arkham is the problem. Some idiot took it into his head to repeat the trick of releasing the most dangerous of its inmates. Ichabod pours himself a glass of wine and then drinks out of the bottle. 

“Ichabod.”

Ichabod drops the bottle and it shatters on the hardwood floor, spraying red wine onto the sofa and onto his slacks. It pools around the broken glass and it looks too familiar, it looks like a broken balcony door and blood. 

Jonathan looks up from his seat in the shadowed corner of the room and clicks the side light on. Other than the television, it’s the only other light in the room. He’s gained back the weight he lost and the dark circles under his eyes are gone but he’s still wearing the ugly orange jumpsuit from Arkham and he’s huddled up in a way that suggests he’s not altogether together. 

Ichabod shouldn’t be surprised, he left the spare key under the welcome mat, but he has a dozen stupid things on the tip of his tongue anyway; saying something like ‘Jonathan’ or even ‘Scarecrow’ would be stating the obvious so he just sits down heavily and he suspects he looks as stupid as he feels. The silence stretches out as the television reports the latest damage to Gotham.

“I made these,” Jonathan says abruptly. He uncurls to hold something out but he falters and his hands shake, and a thousand paper cranes scatter over the living room, floating on the wine, wilting from the moisture. “I think they’re for you.” 

Ichabod picks one up and turns it over in his fingers and it unfolds into a Rorschach inkblot. It might be a pelvic bone, or a butterfly, or the cross-section of a vertebra. Ichabod can pretend he sees something, but mostly he just sees ink blotted on a page. They all look the same to him anyway. Jonathan glances out the window at the chaos on the streets. Ichabod can’t force a smile. “That’s a bit…”

“Freudian?” Jonathan says, and he gets up, crunching over the broken glass so he can sit next to Ichabod. His eyes aren’t quite focused and his movements are clumsy and he rubs at his temples as though struggling to concentrate but he doesn’t protest when Ichabod takes one of his hands and threads their fingers together. His hands are warm, for once. Jonathan curls up again, this time with his knees bumping into Ichabod’s thigh and his head on Ichabod’s shoulder.

There are a dozen stupid things on the tip of Ichabod’s tongue but he says, “I missed you,” and that doesn’t seem too bad. 

“The sedative,” Jonathan says and then trails off, looking confused. Ichabod doesn’t press him and a moment or two later Jonathan tries again. 

They’ve had him on a sedative since he was cured of the effects of the gas. For hours at a time he couldn’t focus, couldn’t think, and each time it wore off he would remember and each time he was certain he wasn’t remembering everything and that they were destroying his mind. Before it wore off, when he was still too uncoordinated to fight them, they would drug him again. He says he barely crawled away from Arkham and there’s dirt under his fingernails that says he might be telling more of the truth than Ichabod can bear to think about.

Ichabod drags the blanket over them and puts the television on mute. The sofa isn’t quite wide enough for two grown men to lie on, so Ichabod lies on the sofa and Jonathan mostly lies on him. Jonathan has no where else to go, Ichabod knows that, and abruptly, with Jonathan slowly coming back to himself, Ichabod wonders what will happen when Jonathan doesn’t need him any more.

He dozes off with Jonathan’s hair soft under his hands and the warm thud of Jonathan’s heart beat against his own.

*~*~*~*

Jonathan is gone when Ichabod wakes up again, or maybe that’s the reason Ichabod wakes up. He doesn’t need to check the apartment, even though the orange Arkham uniform is neatly folded on the chair. He’s spent enough time alone to know when the apartment has someone else in it and Jonathan is gone. There’s no glass on the floor but the wine is still there and so is the double-handful of bent and broken origami cranes. Ichabod tries very hard not to picture Jonathan picking up the glass shard by shard before he left.

There are only eighty three cranes. Most of them were Rorschach tests or questionnaires to check levels of disorders. Jonathan used to be a doctor with a specialty that Ichabod can barely pronounce never mind understand and they drugged him to incoherency and watched him fold their tests into birds because it really didn’t matter if they diagnosed him since he was going to be there for the rest of his life. Only one of the questionnaires has any writing on it and it’s nearly illegible. He wonders if any of the doctors realized at least part of the reason for the origami was because Jonathan couldn’t work a pencil properly and wouldn’t admit to it. He has poor circulation; the drugs must have made fine motor skills nearly impossible. Each fold must have taken an incredible amount of concentration. Ichabod puts the cranes into the trash and mops up the spilt wine. They could have just asked Jonathan. He diagnosed himself months ago and worked out a possible cure, Ichabod just couldn’t get him the drugs.

Ichabod vacuums, just to be certain that all the glass is gone and then goes and stands on his silver-frosted balcony and stares at the fog. 

*~*~*~*

Sometimes Ichabod forgets what Jonathan has done. Jonathan isn’t actually a nice person, especially when he’s in his right mind, but Ichabod likes him. It makes it hard to remember that Jonathan should be in Arkham, not because he needs to get better, but because he’s criminally insane. Jonathan said he suspects childhood trauma and a hereditary tendency for violence in addition to being completely psychopathic. As it turns out, the Scarecrow isn’t a multiple personality, it’s more of an alter ego, the gas attack just confused matters. 

Jonathan lets himself back in a little after ten thirty. He’s wearing a straight-jacket with the sleeves cut off and incredibly tight leather pants. He pulls the Scarecrow mask off and his hair sticks up sweatily in all directions. Jonathan leans back against the door and Ichabod wonders if it makes him a bad person that he doesn’t think about what Jonathan’s done, only that he’s happy Jonathan came back.

“You have a scythe,” Ichabod points out. He wonders what it says about himself that he thinks Jonathan might try and kill him and that it scares him, but it doesn’t bother him. 

Jonathan heaves a sigh, leans the scythe next to him and straightens up, and Ichabod flinches away. Ichabod had forgotten how intense Jonathan’s stare could be. It’s been so long since Jonathan’s been able to focus his attentions. “I’m not sane, you should know that.” Jonathan crosses the room, grabs a handful of Ichabod’s hair and jerks Ichabod’s head back. No one touches Ichabod anymore; he’s missed it, even if it hurts. It all hurts, from the arch of his back and his neck, to the hair pulling loose, to the way Jonathan’s other hand digs into the soft skin of his upper arm. There are canisters strapped to Jonathan’s belt and they look like little grenades but they’re labeled with chemical names. Of course he’s not sane. He’s never been close to it.

Ichabod doesn’t bother to struggle. Jonathan sneers at him and lets go. “You have no idea,” Jonathan says, and Ichabod doesn’t think he’s still talking about the same thing. Jonathan sits down on the sofa next to Ichabod and now Ichabod can see old needle tracks from IVs and fading bruises from restraints. 

Ichabod touches the bruising lightly and Jonathan flinches. Ichabod thinks he might have some ideas after all. “I like the leather,” he says, instead of saying he’s sorry for the way life has turned out for Jonathan. 

*~*~*~*

Light flashes intermittently outside the curtains casting bloody patches of light over the bed and over the pale skin of Jonathan’s back and Ichabod’s chest. Ichabod can hear screaming. It might be screams of joy and fireworks. It might be panic and flares. Ichabod doesn’t care. 

He smokes in bed, dropping ash onto his chest and onto the sheets, watching the cherry smoulder dangerously above his eyes. Jonathan rolls over and rubs a finger through the ash, smearing it on Ichabod’s skin. They should leave Gotham, go somewhere where no one knows who Jonathan is. Somewhere warm. Jonathan could practice psychopharmacology again. Ichabod wonders if Jonathan misses being a doctor and if he ever helped anyone, or if he just experimented on them. He suspects that without Batman Jonathan would destroy wherever they went.

The clock reads 12:02 and one of them should say happy New Year but it’s unlikely to come true and it doesn’t seem like anything to celebrate. Ichabod puts the cigarette out in his coffee cup and Jonathan crawls on top of him and pins Ichabod’s wrists to the bed. He’s going to have bruises but he doesn’t mind; his throat and chest are already scored with bite marks and he’s bleeding a little bit from one of them, but he doesn’t mind that either. Ichabod wishes Jonathan a happy New Year and Jonathan calls him a idiot for even thinking it. It still sounds like I love you, to Ichabod. They have sex again because Jonathan’s been gone for two months and because they can and because Jonathan might be insane but he’s beautiful and Ichabod doesn’t mind a lot of things, including the pain because Jonathan’s a sadist.

Jonathan makes breakfast the next morning and he burns the toast and overcooks the eggs. Ichabod was hoping his cooking had also been a symptom of the gas, but it’s probably more to do with the fact that Jonathan microwaved all his meals before he moved in with Ichabod. He’s on the front page of the news but neither of them mention it, just like Ichabod didn’t say anything when Jonathan hung the straight-jacket and mask in the back of the closet. They’ll have to eventually because Ichabod swore to serve and protect and Jonathan hates everyone but Ichabod has the day off and Gotham isn’t his problem this morning.


End file.
